Russia has abandoned its intermediate-range missile moratorium — just as Putin says Oreshnik production is ramping up

On Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country was formally abandoning its moratorium on deploying ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles.

Six years ago, in August 2019, the Russian authorities unilaterally introduced the moratorium after the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF treaty in 1987, “conscious that nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all mankind.” Under the treaty, the two countries agreed to:

• completely eliminate ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles of intermediate range (1,000–5,500 kilometers, or about 620–3,420 miles) and shorter range (500–1,000 kilometers, or about 310–620 miles);
• destroy all fixed and mobile launchers for these classes of missiles;
• ban the production of new missiles of these types;
• ban their testing;
• ban their deployment.

By June 1991, the U.S. and the USSR had fulfilled their obligations to dismantle ground-based missiles and destroy their launchers.

The first Trump administration made the decision to withdraw from the INF treaty.

At the time, the United States accused Russia of violating the agreement. The White House said Moscow was producing and testing the 9M729 cruise missile, which could have a range of 200 to 2,350 kilometers (about 125 to 1,460 miles), as part of the Iskander-K ground-based missile system. Washington also accused Moscow of deploying these systems in Kaliningrad.

Russia, in turn, accused the U.S. of breaching the treaty, claiming that the Aegis Ashore missile defense systems deployed in Poland and Romania — capable of launching surface-to-surface missiles — were incompatible with the INF Treaty’s provisions.

Trump announced his decision in October 2018. On February 2, 2019, the U.S. formally notified Russia of its withdrawal, and exactly six months later, the treaty ceased to be in effect.

Notably, Russia did not wait for the formal termination to abandon its commitments. In March 2019, Putin signed a decree suspending Russia’s compliance with the INF Treaty, followed in July by a corresponding federal law.

That’s not entirely clear.

Moscow never published official documents outlining the exact parameters and conditions of this unilateral moratorium.

Even so, Vladimir Putin proposed that NATO countries join it. Russia said it was prepared not to deploy Iskander-K missile systems if Washington refrained from deploying Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Eastern Europe and agreed to mutual inspections.

It appears the moratorium did not extend to the production or testing of new ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. In May 2024, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country was “stepping up” work to refine such missiles — and moving into the production phase.

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No one. The moratorium was a voluntary pledge by Russia and didn’t grant other countries the right to carry out inspections. They could only take the Russian authorities at their word and use external monitoring tools, such as satellite imagery. Citing the latter, the U.S. maintained that the Iskander-K system had already been deployed.

On one hand, it was trying — without success — to persuade other countries to take on similar commitments. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov made this point immediately after the INF Treaty was terminated, and the following year Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated it:

We also believe that our call for NATO countries to consider a reciprocal moratorium has not lost its relevance.

On the other hand, in 2019 Russia may simply not have had any ground-based intermediate- or shorter-range missiles ready to deploy to its forces. In that case, the moratorium didn’t actually oblige it to do anything.

Most likely, it’s linked to Putin’s recent public statement that Russia is producing and preparing to deploy a new intermediate-range ballistic missile:

First, what I would like to say in this regard. We have produced the first serial Oreshnik system, the first serial missile — and it has already been delivered to the troops. Now the series is underway. That is the first point.

Second. Our specialists — both Belarusian military specialists and Russian experts — have selected a site for future positions, and work is currently underway to prepare these positions. So, most likely, we will finalize this matter by the end of the year.

Deploying the Oreshnik would clearly breach the commitments Russia made under its voluntary moratorium.

Meduza’s Razbor (“Explainers”) team